"I was just waiting to see whether Lieutenant Dournay would recognise me; I belonged to his battery."
"Indeed!" Joseph delightedly chimed in. "He was right popular, I'm certain?"
Bertram did not consider it incumbent upon him to give a direct reply. He only said that he could never have believed that Herr Dournay would ever become a servant.
"Servant?"
"Yes, a servant like us; and because he knows something of books, a tutor."
Joseph smiled in a melancholy way, and took great pains to bring the table over to a correct view. First he praised the celebrated father of Eric, who had received at least twenty decorations; and his mother, who belonged to the nobility; and he was very happy to say that Captain Dournay understood all about the sciences, and, to throw at their heads the very hardest names which he could get hold of,—Anthropology, Osteology, Archæology, and Petrifactology—all these the captain was master of; he was a complete university in himself. But he did not succeed in convincing the company that Eric was anything else than a servant.
The head-gardener said, in a high-Prussian dialect:—
"Anyhow, he is a handsome man, and sits his horse well; but he don't know a thing about gardening."
Lootz, the courier, praised Eric for speaking good French and English, but of course, when it came to Russian, and Turkish, and Polish, the learned gentleman didn't understand them; for Lutz himself, as a journeyman tailor, having made the tour of all countries, understood all languages. He had attended formerly Fräulein von Pranken, the present Countess Wolfsgarten, and two English ladies, on their travels; now he acted as courier for Herr Sonnenkamp on his journeys, and was idle the rest of the time, unless one calls work the carrying of the letter-bag to and from the railroad station, and the playing of the guitar, which the little man practised a good deal, with the accompaniment of his own whistling. He had also a secret service.
There appeared to be a tacit agreement at the table, that they should make no reply to anything that Lutz said; he only received a smile from the second female cook, with whom he had a tender but not acknowledged relation.